Regulating valves have many applications in industry. A wide variety of valves have been developed to serve many different industrial requirements. For some demanding applications requiring high flow rates, high temperatures, corrosive materials or precision cut-off, such as semi-conductor processing, precision instruments, medical, pharmaceuticals, chemical, food processing or the like, existing valve designs are not fully satisfactory.
The limitations of existing valve designs can be subtle but vitally important. These limitations include factors such as: materials required (for the valve construction) such as plastics, elastomers, metals etc. which lead to contamination, corrosion, reliability, particles maintenance and cost issues; sliding surfaces which lead to wear particles, contaminating lubricants, cleaning and sanitation difficulties; complex geometry with accompanying purge and cleaning difficulties. Also large size, temperature limitations and high cost are other complicating factors that limit conventional pinch valve design.
However, even when cost is no object, it still often can be difficult to provide a pinch valve design that would satisfy all the requirements of industry. Therefore, what is needed is a valve with improved features for demanding applications. For example, it would be desirable for such a value to provide improved throttling and sealing characteristics, low friction losses, high flow rates, and resistance to corrosive materials and high temperature.